On The Train to London

Posted by Neil

Rode the 15 miles from home to Chester station in glorious sunshine but a stiff headwind. Successfully caught the train to London and the bike's safely stowed. Time for a cuppa.

En France Practice 4 - 3 Days of Plouay

Poseted by Neil

The UCI Pro Tour rolls into the tiny town of Plouay every August for the Grand Prix de Bretagne. It's a 248km 13 laps of a course that has its start/finish line near the town's velodrome. The preceding day sees the junior and ladies races and the major teams usually field strong B teams for the main event. So the likes of BMC, HTC Highroad (with Renshaw), Sky (with Swift, Thomas & Bosenhagen), Europcar (with Voekeler), FDJ, Leopard Trek, Cofidis, Astana, Saxo Bank and more fielding teams gives a mini TdF flavour.

Via Nirone 7 posing next to sponsor's banners

On the Friday, the amateurs get a turn with sportive, randonee, VTT and walking events available, all using the same start line as the main event. I was entered into the randonee event as there's some kind of licence / medical cert requirement for the sportive. Even these amateur events attracted a full page preview and 3 page report in the Ouest France newspaper.

I opted for the 90km ride but managed to miss the big start (1900 in the randonee) by 30 minutes because I'd got mixed up with when the campsite allowed car movements in the early morning, but the organisers still allowed me to run. Nice. This route was constantly undulating, no real big climbs, but no rest sections either. There was one refreshment point where I filled up with water and enjoyed bananas and madelines. I probably picked off 100 or so riders over the route which made me feel better, given their 30 min head start. Nice weather too, wet roads to start with but no rain nor wind and temps around the 20 mark. Had my first puncture after 4000 miles of puncture free riding on Conti Gatorskins, but it was just over 1km from the finish so I walked it over the line. Good job my French is poor so I didn't have to understand the commentators' sarky remarks.

56 miles in 3 hrs 33 mins including the walking, so pretty pleased with that. Post ride refreshments included the option of a beer!

So that's all my riding done now, next time on the bike will be on the way from Euston to the hotel in London on the night before the first day of L2P. Gulp!

En France Practice 3

Posted by Neil

Today's ride felt like great practice for Kent. I didn't want to spend much time looking at maps so I just decided to head out through Carnac and stick to the major single carriageway D roads to the West with the city of Lorient at my halfway point before completing the ride by just retracing my tracks.

Despite holding back on setting off until later in the morning (allowing breakfast with the family) to wait for some showers to pass over, about 2 hours of this ride was spent in fairly significant rain. By French standards these were pretty busy roads and Lorient turned out not to be worth the effort. So good practice for Kent and Dover!

A very robust 61 miles this time, and a For Goodness Shakes vanilla flavour consumed ready for the big event out of Plouay tomorrow.

En France Practice 2

Posted by Neil
Another 57 miles today, again on fairly unchallenging roads. Great weather though with very little wind but occasional gusts of probably no more than 10 kph. A good scenic route out around the Western edges of the Gulf of Morbihan then over to the rather underwhelming city of Vannes before a lunch break in St Anne d'Auray. Headed back to camp by skirting around Auray on the way to Erdeven and Carnac.

Photo of the Via Nirone 7 at the Gulf port of Larmor-Baden.

Sunday Re-run

Posted by Neil

Trying to keep up with Dylan, I planned a decent ride this past weekend.  Following in the wheel tracks of our practice group ride I headed into the head wind that is prevalent in my part of North Wales and pointed the Bianchi in the direction of the Ponderosa.  As I headed up through Gwynymynydd and onto the later climbs after Llanarmon-yn-lal towards Llandegla and then the final one up to the Ponderosa cafe I felt really good.  I noticed the headwind, but the legs were very willing to push me up the hills.

After enjoying the descent of the Horseshoe pass, there was mild disappointment that there were no steam engines in sight at Llangollen.  The more rolling roads from there towards Rhos and then over the A483 were no problem, then there was the long straight road out to Bangor on Dee. Here the wind was more behind / side.  Stopped for lunch in Malpas for 15 mins or so then continued with the intention of going past Beeston, but I must've missed a turn somewhere and ended up at Tattenhall.  No problems, just went towards Clutton, Coddington and then on to Farndon / Holt to get more or less back on track.  However, after Tattenhall it was pretty much into the headwind again with only the occasional respite of a side wind as and when the road took at turn in the correct direction.

After Holt it was Rossett, a glimpse of the Red Arrow's display finale over Chester then to Dodleston, along to Kinnerton and up the sting in the tail - the climb to Penymynydd.  This last section was very hard work - with a head wind and a few brief showers, I definitely felt tired and really running on autopilot.

When I got home I ate 2 portions of blackberry and apple crumble & ice cream and drank 2 large mugs of tea before I felt reasonably ready to move on with my day.  Although I have been drinking every 10 minutes or so and snacking reasonably often, I think I need to do more to keep my energy and hydration levels up - drinking more at each intake and snacking more frequently.

As for the numbers - 72.8 miles, 5hrs 29mins elapsed riding time and 5hrs 51mins elapsed time.  So not bad at an average of 13.3 mph.  Still hoping very much for no head winds!

Loaded, Suited and Booted

Posted by Neil

A busy day today out in the North Wales sunshine of our backyard.  In preparation for the L2P ride in September I've done a major service on the Bianchi Via Nirone 7 Alu Carbon (snappy eh?) today.  This might seem a bit premature, but the plan is to get a few more 20-30 mile hilly rides and one more 70-80 before we're off on holiday to France(!) for a fortnight.  In that fornight I plan to do a few short early morning rides and then 2 consecutive days of 60 miles per day, one pair per week.

So I thought it wise to do the major service now and get a couple of weeks of use out of the bike before we head off to France to iron out any wrinkles.  So today we have the following:

2 x new Continental Gatorskin 700 x 23 C tyres
2 x new inner tubes
1 x new SRAM PC971 chain
4 x new Fibrax brake pads
4 x stainless steel retaining bolts for brake pads (original chromed bolts going rusty)
New rear skewer fitted with conversion kit for pannier mounting
Bar tape end tapes replaced
All hub bearings checked for play
BB checked for play
Loosened headset, re-tightened and checked for play
Brakes adjusted
Gears adjusted
All bolts checked for tightness
Everything thoroughly cleaned and frame polished

This means that I'm ready for my trial run tomorrow as I've also packed everything (except my passport and stuff like gels, energy bars etc, as they'll be going in the jersey back pockets) into the panniers tonight  and they're mounted up on the seat post mounted rack that Stuart has kindly loaned to me.  It was a bit of a shock how much it all weighs and I'm going to re-appraise everything when I empty them out to see if there are further weight savings to be made (for example, there's a pair of crocs in their at the moment - if its going to be dry I won't be needing them as I'll just be able to wear my Shimano M040 MTB SPD shoes for normal walking.  The lock is a big contributor, but that's an essential item as far as I'm concerned.  Our kitchen scales only go up to 2kg so I can't accurately weigh the panniers.  I would estimate 3.5 - 4 kg each and there's 2 of them.  Here's the bike all ready to go:

Training Rides Update

Posted by Neil

A few reasonable rides to report and it's a mixed bag.

A couple of rides in and around the Ribble Valley and the Forest of Bowland areas. Being based in Clitheroe for the bank holiday week at the end of May that gave the opportunity to ride through some different and rather attractive scenery.
First up was a 38 mile loop around the forest of Bowland and there are three main features to this ride. First up is the  climb up Waddington Moor which accounts for a large chunk of the 760m of climbing on this ride. It's appeared a few times on the Tour of Britain as a Cat 1 climb. Usually it's possible to get a good 45mph on the relief of the descent on the other side but due to the second feature of the ride it was necessary to be on the brakes to keep the bike stable in the strong cross-wind. It's amazing how windy it's been recently back in North Wales and Lancashire was no different - so thats a mixed bag - great when it pushes you along and, they say, great for building strength and stamina when it's in yer face.  Finally, the roads. Good grief they're bad in this area, so much so there are some places where it's downright dangerous for cyclists. fortunately my Conti Gatorskin tyres and the strength of the Xero wheels meant no punctures or  worse.

Second ride was just as windy but a less hilly 43 miles along the valley to Settle and back. Not much to report on this one, other than they do good tea and scones at The Naked Man cafe in the main square!

Last but not least was last Sunday. I headed out from home around 8.45 am knowing that rain was expected around mid-day but with the hope that I'd get most of the planned 71 miles done by then. the route had a couple of options to cut across the loop and shorten the time required. Within 10 minutes the rain started. And never stopped. In fact, it became torrential, and then the wind joined in the party.  I was taking a similar route to the training ride we're planning on 27 June but with a slightly longer, slightly hillier approach to the Horseshoe Pass. The puddles became deeper, they started spreading wide across the road and the wind became stronger - it was becoming harder to ride.
Fortunately I'd packed my new Pearl Izumi Elite Barrier convertible jacket (the sleeves and shoulder tops unzip to form a gilet) and that did an excellent job of keeping most of me dry. I didn't however pack my overshoes and that soon started to give me problems with my feet getting colder and wetter by the mile.
The climb from Llandegla up to the Ponderosa Cafe at the top of the Horseshoe Pass was the final straw - the gusts of side wind became somewhat dangerous and I decided that the descent and the following section over World's End would be both excessively cold and potentially dangerous.  So it was into the Ponderosa for a lovely hot cuppa where there were virtually no motor bikers and certainly no other cyclists. there were some comments questioning my sanity!
The return ride was somewhat easier, being predominantly downhill but the increased speed meant the wind chill became a factor and my fingers were suffering somewhat.
Lisa and kids looked after me well on arrival home and a cup of tea and a warm bath were soon ready, whilst I wrung out my socks. After 2 hours of torrential rain the PI jacket had kept my top half completely dry - excellent. Only managed 30 miles so somewhat less than planned. Felt like I'd done 50 though!
Let's hope for better weather on 27th.